Category Archives: Media

Advertisers (may the good Lord have mercy on them) are skilled at creating need where no need exists, and will spin the most incredible lies to make it happen. I’m particularly interested in how they pretend to “break taboos” to make new markets for their shiny bullshit trinkets. Like, oh let’s say, cosmetics aimed at men.

Razors and shaving gels are basically cosmetics and are sold in a very specific way. Which is the following. Show a rugged NOT GAY man in his clean and shiny AND NOT GAY bathroom. He’ll be shaving and – NOT GAY! – moisturizing and occasionally slapping himself in the face in a very NOT GAY manner. Probably while thinking of fighter planes or racing cars or horses – NO, NOT HORSES! GAY! – sorry, sailing ships, all while wearing a self-satisfied grin. Maybe some teeth will be broken. You know, from all that manly fighting.

And then – and here’s the crucial part – a hot chick will appear in time to smile and kiss him and rub a very definitely feminine hand across his clean manly jaw. This scene is vital just to dispel the final shreds of doubt about this guy POSSIBLY BEING GAY. And then maybe an explosion, just for good measure. A good orange and red and pi – NOT PINK! – explosion. Yeah. Yeah! Fuck it YEAH!

But now these ads have been vastly out-manned by the manly, masculine, macho, straight and quite definitely hard ad for this new product – nail varnish for men. Here’s the ad. It pretty much speaks for itself. Drop your jaw now, it’s easier that way.

(If the link’s broken, just do a search for Alpha Nail. Yes, you heard me. Alpha fucking Nail.)

What an utter and total cock. He’s NOT GAY though, as shown by, oh, pretty much everything in that ad. Now I’ve been dabbling with using nail varnish for years, for special occasions. I quite like it. I know other men who do too. And we don’t require a 5o-megaton high-octane flesh-neck-screaming moron to get us to do it.

I hope this product fails. Because buying a ballsy for-men product isn’t “hard” or “manly”. You know what’s ballsy? Walking into a shop and buying “ladies” nail varnish just because you want to. And putting it on, just because you want to. And ignoring what rugged insecure nitwits on TV are telling you about how and in what way you should “be a man”.

And hey, why not finish off with this, which sums up marvelously how ads aimed at men and women are different.

Today there’s been a storm in the Swedish media (and most others too) about Ikea. Apparently they’ve been airbrushing women out of their catalog for the Saudi Arabian market. The Saudis don’t like looking at photos of women. Especially not women hanging out at home and having the audacity to WEAR PYJAMAS. The filthy tramps. Pyjamas! What will the children think? Or maybe they’re not allowed to think at all? Phew, close one.

So, anyway, Ikea doesn’t feel it should take any responsibility for the way their oil-rish customers would very much like to shit on human rights. They’re just there to sell furniture, they say. Very nice, Ikea. How useful that your corporate “ideals” are exactly the same ideals that will earn you lots of money. What a very happy accident. Let’s suck money out of a country that oppresses half of its population, while rabbiting on about “female empowerment” in other areas. Areas, by another amazing co-incidence, that will ALSO earn Ikea lots of money. Wow!

Screw you Ikea, you corporate slug with your shitty furniture and your high opinion of yourself, using your power and influence for nothing good whatsoever. Take your carefully constructed “we care” bullshit, insert it firmly into slot B and turn it a full revolution. Either direction is fine.

Click through the photos in the Swedish newspaper (first link above). There’s a photo showing some Ikea designers, and the same one in the Saudi catalog but with the single woman removed. I bet she’s happy about that and can’t wait to work for Ikea again.

But I have a solution for Ikea. Just release the catalog without women or men or any people at all, and instead put all the people on separate stickers. Then we can have a jolly old time putting in people of whatever race, sex, or flavour into any situation we desire. Imagine it! Grinning babies in ovens. A line of men’s heads on the top shelf of a Billy. A woman showing her hair. A scary man hiding under the children’s bed.

And presto – suddenly nobody is offended! Endless fun and chuckling for all! Except for the ones who have to suffer for it, in a country Ikea will do nothing whatsoever to improve. Unless, of course, there’s a profit in it for Mr. Kamprad. Then it’s all steam ahead, and corporate bullshit to maximum. Cash ahoy, mateys!

What do you get when you put the most incompetent bunch of idiots ever assembled on a spaceship, and team them up with the most moronic and lazy scriptwriters money can buy? You get Prometheus, is what you get. The latest nail in the coffin of movie science fiction and intelligent cinema. And the latest reason to keep old men away from the good things they made in their youth. At all costs.

This film is a joke. It pretends to be “deep” and “philosophical” but just throws together random and badly thought-out space-movie tropes in any order. None of it makes sense, even in the logic-sparse world of big-screen science fiction.

Every single thing the characters do is unbelievable and stupid. They expose themselves to alien environments and substances at the drop of a hat. They show no curiosity about the things happening on their own ship. They all seem incredibly unsuited to their jobs. They are scared by pointless things, and completely not bothered by, oh, actual aliens.

Two crew members die in the alien structure, and nobody knows about it. Despite having a fucking massive high-tech console with every possible kind of feed. Apparently there’s no “record” function, and the guy on duty heads off for a quick shag. Nobody misses them until the next morning, and still they can’t figure out why they’re not saying anything.

Don’t even get me started on the alien structure’s very handy holographic projector, which replays only scenes that are extremely relevant to the plot, for no fucking apparent reason. Or the “archeologists” who’ve crossed thirty light-years for this mess and decide to take the first night off and hang out a bit. In their bedroom. Or the inane warbling about alien and human DNA being the same, while ignoring the fact that human DNA is similar to that of every creature on the Earth.

I can forgive a little hand-waving in movies, a little glossing-over of plot points for the greater good. But not in every single fucking scene. This movie was one long pointless chore. A chore made much worse in that I had to watch the fucking thing in 3D. And pay 50% more for my ticket for the fucking privilege.

Basically, I require the same from my science fiction movies as from other kinds — that they make sense. Why is this very basic demand so often disregarded? Do they assume we’ll come for the fucking flashy CGI and turn our brains completely off? Just because there’s spaceships and, oooh, aliens? Fuck you Hollywood, you lazy arrogant pricks.

I want to shove a spear up Ridley fucking Scott’s arse for treating me like a moron. That’s what he did with this movie. He charged me money for this dirge and sprayed diarrhea on a screen and said, “Look! It’s an alien, see?”

Don’t see this. It makes science fiction, the most intelligent and far-thinking of genres, into shit pudding. And please, somebody stop that bastard Scott from ruining Blade Runner in the same way by doing a prequel or a fucking remake or whatever the fuck he might be planning. For all that’s good and fine, please stop him. With a crowbar if necessary.

It’s pretty hard to miss the news coming in from Japan. If a crushing earthquake wasn’t enough, the country was ploughed by tsunami and now faces nuclear fallout from its aging reactors. Thousands are dead, more are missing and millions are homeless. Watching the news for just five minutes is pretty heart-wrenching.

You would think the world would show its sympathy for Japan in the same way that most of us showed sympathy for the events of September 11 2001. Unfortunately this wasn’t entirely the case as shown by this image doing the rounds over the last day or two. I’ll link to the fucking thing, but I won’t give it any column inches. It’s basically a collection of retarded moronic red-neck comments made by idiot Americans on Facebook. Have a look, if you must, but hold your breath.

These brilliant samples of humanity are pointing out how the Japanese deserve this horrendous situation because of Pearl Harbour. They bombed us, yeah, de sure did, so fuck ‘em. Well pass the shotgun ma there’s a squirrel on my knee and my dick is the sick of an acorn, ha-yuck.

These people. These fucking people. There’s not much to say really, is there? It’s just mind-melting that useless pieces of crap like this can live and breath and share the same planet as the rest of us. Even if their little comments were accurate, it would be a very nasty thing to say right now when the Japanese are suffering like this. However there is very little that can be considered true in their Pearl Harbour comment. Let’s just throw a few facts out there, shall we.

A good many people died at Pearly Harbour. Mostly soldiers though. Soldiers in a war. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki civilians were targeted (which I believe is called terrorism) and vastly more were killed. And there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the atomic attacks were not actually necessary to stop the war at all and were only done to show the world what the American atomic weapons could do, and also to crush Japan quickly so the USA wouldn’t have to share it with the Russians as they did with Germany. “Saving American lives” wasn’t really a consideration. It was about power and posturing, and as for dead civilians… fuck ‘em.

Then of course Pearl Harbour wasn’t really part of the US at all, but annexed by them, which means basically stolen, in 1893. Do our fantastically thick Facebookers know this? No, of course they don’t. By all means, prove me wrong people, please do.

Finally, of course, being Americans, I would guess that the majority of these fine people would describe themselves as Christians. And not at all understand why that’s ironic. Because, as I’ve mentioned, they are as fucking thick as a shit slushy.

I’ve checked a few people on this image, and they do indeed have real Facebook accounts. This is possibly the most scary thing of all, that this is actually for real. If anybody wants to harass them and send them naughty words, you have my blessing. They deserve nothing less, the rancid malevolent little turds.

Goodness me, is that the time? Three weeks since my last blog entry? I think my brain is entering some kind of hibernation period. It’s the weather, I say. Perhaps a catastrophic lack of tea and biscuits. Or maybe I’m just in need of a good, hard, proper… oh yeah, my family might be reading… bugger… urm, a good hard proper… crossword…

But alright, for your titillation allow me to present a story from that shit-house of a newspaper, Sweden’s Aftonbladet. The title? “Cold-weather expert says to piss on the tongue”, which pretty much sums it up. You see, this ex-army no-nonsense dude suggests that when the wee ones do what wee ones do and get their tongues stuck to metal poles in winter, that the only solution is to produce the old fleshy hose-pipe and piss on them.

Now I’m not saying it doesn’t work but I am pretty sure that, along with me, everybody out there shudders when they read this. And now I have a permanent image of the old chap popping open his fly with a grim look about him, turning to the tongue-stretchy kid and saying – “Hold on there now Timmy, this won’t hurt a bit. Wait… wait… hang on… ah there we go, better in than out, eh lad?”

And yes, I know I should be talking about serious things like suicide bombers and whistle-blowers but fuck it. That shit’s far too depressing. So if you want some good old-fashioned and non-lethal pee humour in these dark times, you know where to come, and keep on coming… oh crap, wait…

Today I made the classic mistake of watching the news at breakfast. Bad idea. I am not normally know for my pleasant demeanour in the mornings, and watching that carnival of inanity pushes me way over the edge into proper “grumpy old man” territory.

Article one that lit my fuse was a collection of total fucking morons in Belgrade who turned out in their Soviet-era sweats to protest the fact that other people had the nerve to exist. In this case, they were showing their displeasure against the upcoming Pride parade. And, as homophobes always do, the people interviewed went on about “traditional values” and “family values” and “religious values” and other such steaming horse shit to justify their actions.

I mean, when will these people grow a pair and actually say what they are thinking instead of just hiding behind religion and tradition? Fucking tossers. I would have much more respect for them if they turned out with signs simply saying “I Hate Homos”. Fucking cowards and fucking idiots all in one, with their tiny piggy eyes and their big penile compensation signs. It almost makes me glad that there is no heaven as, if there were, I might have to share it with gobshites like that.

Article two that inflamed my wrath is this one. A divorced man in Sweden takes his two kids and hoofs it. The article tells us there is a risk he might take the kids illegally back to his own country and then asks for our help in looking out for them. Whereupon the “journalists” tell us what kind of dress the little girl is wearing and then stop talking. They completely don’t tell us what the guy looks like, surely the most important piece of data here. They have pretty much told us he is not a white Swede, but then don’t dare to tell us his actual appearance.

This, I imagine, comes from the classic Swedish fear of being portrayed a racist. But in this case, I just don’t get it. Just what is wrong with saying “It’s a Middle-Eastern dude” or “It’s a Kenyan dude” or “It’s a white dude from South Africa” or whatever. Don’t they want the kids to be found? And, if so, shouldn’t they actually just give us the info and let us make our own minds up?

Seriously, saying that the dude is from country X and looks like Y is not racism. If the press really cared about those kids being found, and not just about looking PC, then they would tell us. But I guess they don’t. It’s just news, something to fill the seconds with.

I could go on, oh yes I could, on and on and on. But I won’t. There’s a nice day ahead full of things that won’t annoy me, so I’ll think about them instead. And I’ll have my trusty TV-B-Gone at the ready, just in case a TV tries to sneak up on me when I least expect it.

I hate it when I give away all the tension directly in the title of the blog. Like I just did now. Damn it. So, yeah, men’s razors have daft names. Really incredibly daft. As if all the meetings take place in day-care centres and involve Duplo and modelling clay. Examples? Oh you betcha.

Fusion ProGlide Power

Fusion Power Phenom

Mach3 Turbo Champion

Quattro Titanium Precision

See? Now Dara O’Briain below says it rather better than me. Note there are Greek subtitles because some kind moron removed the swear words in the English version. Because we are so delicate. (For the sake of completion, here’s what they removed: shit, fuck, fuck, fucking, Christ, shit, Jesus Christ, fuck, Pope Rat’s Arse).

The reason, I imagine, is because advertisers are idiots. Yeah, actually, that’s it right there, dans une nutshell. Advertisers are complete fucking morons who should be whipped to within an inch of their lives, and regularly. That’s been established by me, Bill Hicks and pretty much fucking everybody. QED. From the Latin: Quadvertisers Er Diotes.

And what do I shave with? A simple honest Protector. Twelve years old and still going strong. And therefore to the advertisers I say – shove THAT in your arse and smoke it. Or shave it. Whatever.